Andy was enjoying a weekend away with his wife when it happened. “My neighbour phoned me and said, ‘The police are in your house. They’re looking for you.’” He didn’t need to wonder why. “You know. You know the reason. I was petrified when I got that call. It wasn’t just the thought of other people knowing what I had done; I also had to face myself, and that is a sick feeling – it is guilt, shame.”

Notorious video chat site Omegle — which was launched to link like-minded strangers but morphed into a cesspool for child predators — was shut down Thursday.

Founded in 2009 by a then 18-year-old Leif K-Brooks, the site has faced multiple allegations over the years of being a breeding ground for child pornography and sexual abuse of minors.

The decision to pull the plug comes a week after Omegle settled a $22 million lawsuit filed by the parents of an 11-year-old girl who was randomly matched with a since-convicted Canadian pedophile, according to the CBC.

A phone, a few photos and artificial intelligence have stirred controversy and shattered the privacy of several teens at a New Jersey high school after they learned that nude images of them — created via AI — were circulated in group chats.

Why it matters: The incident is a poignant example of the threats that come with unregulated, expanding artificial intelligence access, experts told Axios.

When girls at Westfield High School in New Jersey found out boys were sharing nude photos of them in group chats, they were shocked, and not only because it was an invasion of privacy. The images weren’t real.

Students said one or more classmates used an online tool powered by artificial intelligence to make the images, then shared them with others. The discovery has sparked uproar in Westfield, an affluent town outside New York City.

Elon Musk reinstated a QAnon-promoting far-right Twitter account that posted child abuse imagery, even though his company’s policy explicitly says that’s not allowed.

On Wednesday, Musk tweeted that the company would reinstate the account of the notorious far-right troll known as “Dom Lucre.” Lucre’s account was banned on Wednesday after he had posted child exploitation images four days previously.

“For now, we will delete those posts and reinstate the account,” Musk tweeted in response to another account questioning why Twitter had deleted the account.

Multiple images of nude underage girls were found on an email account linked to billionaire banker T. Denny Sanford, according to affidavits released Thursday.

Sanford, the richest man in South Dakota with connections to several powerful officials, was under investigation for three years for accessing and possessing child pornography. No charges were filed in South Dakota after the investigation concluded in May 2022.